hellsteelfandomcom-20200214-history
Baltoh
Baltoh is a Demon/Archangel Hybrid, the Silver Hybrid, is the main character of Hellsteel. A Demon is usually born from the residual hatred and evil in human souls, but the hatred within Baltoh's soul is hatred of evil, as all the humans that make up his spirit were condemned to Hell for committing murder in the name of justice, such as cops, executioners, knights, and so on. He formed from this hatred and came to be first as a Demon, but his hatred of evil drove him to kill himself due to his unholy existence. That act of self-destruction to remove evil from the universe allowed him to transcend beyond Demonhood, gaining Archangel powers and becoming a Hybrid. Even though he is half-Demon and half-Archangel, he is more than twice as strong than an individual of either race and can easily crush armies of such beings. After attaining the Throne of Cinereo, he becomes the Celestial Avatar, a divine being with almost limitless powers and abilities. Appearance As a Hybrid, Baltoh possesses the physical traits of both a Demon and an Archangel. He has a humanoid body but with dark gray skin. His fingers and toes are tipped with claws, each possessing a razor edge rather than a simple sharp point. From the base of his spine grows a black, rope-like tail, ten feet in length, with the end wielding a large bladed hook, similar to a harpoon. He possesses two sets of wings, each of which is twice his size. The upper set is covered in white feathers, reminiscent of a dove, while the lower set consist of scaly membranes stretched across a bony frame, similar to a bat. He has long black hair and pointed ears, with sharp, predatory fangs, and two horns growing from his hairline that curve down his scalp as if combed back. His eyes have cobalt-blue irises with crimson sclera. Above his head is a burning halo. On his wrists, he wears a pair of Helliron shackles, just like a Demon, along with a pair of rosary chains, though they have no cross, just like an Archangel. If one of the shackles or the rosary chains breaks on their own, Baltoh will supposedly die following a massive power surge, but if he breaks one of his shackles and rosary chains at the same time, he is able to attain the Throne of Cinereo. Baltoh's attire is similar to an Archangels, though all of his clothes are either black or gray. He wears a pair of laceless boots, baggy pants, a sash around his waist, a hooded sweatshirt, and a vest. In his awakened form, Baltoh takes on a monstrous appearance. He is covered in a bony exoskeleton, similar to armor, with his head secured in a helmet shaped like an axe blade and his fingers turned into large scythe-like blades. Incantations are written across his body, made of his ethereal code, a kind of DNA for non-physical entities, consisting of a mix of Hellscript and Enochian. The soles of his feet lift off the ground, letting him run on all fours, and the claws on his toes are replaced with large talons like a predatory bird. On his ankles are two feathered wings, like the sandals of the Greek god Hermes. His tail splits apart into ten, the exoskeleton encasing them resembling spinal columns, with holy lightning sparking between them. His wings curl up into cone shapes made of bone, similar to conch shells. The cones are lined with open slots, firing pure energy similar to rocket thrusters. His burning halo fuses with his hair, turning into fiery mane, and his horns grow and extend, turning into antlers. His cheeks disappear, allowing him to open his jaws wider and take larger bites out of his prey, and his eyes become two fireballs. After attaining the Throne of Cinereo, Baltoh's appearance becomes much more human-like. His tattered clothes are replaced and go from dark gray to a deep blue, his black hair becomes blond, and his pale complexion is now a healthy tan. His claws were gone, replaced with small metal plates that protrude from his flesh and cover the backs of his fingers and hands like tiles. Instead of iron shackles or rosary beads around his wrists, his forearms arre decorated with two ornate bracers of sterling silver. He loses his horns and halo, in place gaining a miniature galaxy rotating above his head. His four wings had fused together into a hooded trench coat, made of no actual fabric and carrying the shimmering appearance of the cosmos, with the stars, nebulae, and bright clouds of dust and gas shifting and spinning like a window looking into deep space. His eyes also change in color, with his sclera turning into a rippling cascade of rainbow-silver rings, all stretching out from his golden irises. Personality and History As his spirit is made from the souls of millions of people, his existence is defined by his hatred of evil and his need to exterminate it. He is so obsessed with this mission that he spent his life fighting almost nonstop against Demons in the pits of Hell. Due to the time ratio in Hell, he was already forty thousand years old when he came to New York. The memories of the tortures his human souls experienced, as well as the eons of combat he endured in Hell, left him with a very narrow range of emotions. All that time, he was focused entirely on his war against the Demons, driven entirely by hatred and anger. The only time he stopped fighting was to collect the materials for his weapons and cast his bullets or flee to Earth to escape Iscariot or the Hell Princes. Due to his power, he was able to corral and arm legions of damned souls, showing that he had enough charisma to earn their respect and loyalty. His hatred of evil compels him not just to fight Demons, but to also protect souls that he deemed unjustly condemned. He is compelled to protect people, even if it means suffering in their place. When Rosemary teaches him the Cleansing Repentence spell, a technique that allows and Angelic being to purge sins from the soul, he begins using it on the people of New York, so that even if they die, they won't be condemned to Hell. However, the technique causes pain in proportion to the souls being removed. Baltoh is unable to remove the pain so he instead directs it to himself, leaving the people to feel the pain they caused others, but protecting them from having to suffer for minor sins that didn't hurt anyone. Michael takes note of this seeming hypocrisy, that Baltoh is so willing to forgive people for their sins, when he himself has such a burning hatred for anything even remotely evil. But just as much as he hates evil, he also values freedom, claiming that even God lacks the right to take that away. After seeing billions of people suffering in Hell for minor sins, he learned to see the difference between human evil and simple human flaw and believes that people should only be punished for the sin of harming others, while all other sins are merely the flaws that add character and individuality to the human race. He uses this belief to help Molly gain her fighting spirit, telling her that giving in to fear means surrendering freedom and that while retreating from an enemy may save her life, that enemy had taken her freedom. Second to Demons and evil itself, what Baltoh hates more than anything else is God and the Archangels. The first reason for this is the conditions that led to Baltoh's creation, the fact that heroes, and not just heroes but all the innocents that committed minor sins, are condemned to Hell because God altered the natural order of damnation and ascension. One of the souls within him is the soul of Saint Longinus, a wayward spirit that does not belong with the others. During the crucifixion, when Longinus stabbed Christ, some of Jesus's blood landed in his eyes, not only restoring his vision but passing on Jesus's memories and the knowledge of God's plot. Those memories are passed on to Baltoh, fueling his hatred of God. The third reason is brought on through the results of his research. By meeting the original Archangels of God's race, he's able to learn the location of their homeworld and discover the mass extinction that God wrought to hide the secret of his origins. He also despises Michael and the other six Archangels created by God, for their refusal to question him and the part they took in the failed "Christ plot". He compares them to the bystanders of Germany who watched the Holocaust take place. His hatred runs so deep that although he possesses all but two of the Sacred Relics, he does not reveal that fact to the Archangels, as he knows that should God or Devil seize them, then the Christ plot would be restarted. He keeps them secret, even while knowing that they could possibly be used to close the doorway and save the city, out of this fear. Only his desperation at the thought of facing Iscariot convinces him to finally uses them, but he warns that he can destroy them at any moment, should anyone try to take them. When Rosemary came to Hell, he first considered her just a nuisance, and only took her under his wing so that he could use her as bait to draw the Demons to him and slay them en masse. While she wasn't aware of it, her presence did change him. He learned how to converse with people and understood the fundamentals of interpersonal relationships. Due to his emotional inexperience, he did not develop romantic feels for her, thinking of her rather as kin. Their relationship was impossible to properly describe, being a mix of father and daughter, brother and sister, teacher and student, and simply friends. It was his experience with Rosemary that allowed him to understand love, and by extension allowed him to love Selene. When he first came to New York and met Selene, he was unable to understand his attraction to her. This confusion as to his feelings left him distracted, that distraction weakening him to the point that Abaddon and Rimmon (albeit enhanced) were able to temporarily hold their own against him. When he and Selene make love for the first time, he suffers from a mental breakdown, as the act of intimacy is so contrary to his known existence that he loses his sense of identity. Up until then, he had never known who or what he was, believing himself to be nothing more than an anomaly, an abomination. He had spent his life trying to drown that turmoil with combat, but upon meeting Selene, someone who is his exact opposite, he realized that he had no idea what that made him. After that, he resolved to find out about his origins and began searching Hell for relics that his human souls had once possessed. Selene's impact on his life is so intense that his love for her surpasses his hatred of Demons when he is forced to prevent the Archangels from interrupting the portal ritual. When she is killed, his rage allows him to shoot multiple Ragnarök blasts in rapid succession, something that would have been unthinkable under normal conditions. Over the course of the month-long war, Baltoh's personality continues to evolve. Initially, he acts as a lone agent, simply fighting alongside the Archangels to protect the humans, but as the fighting progresses, he takes on the role of a leader, earning the respect and admiration of both the humans and Archangels. Molly notices the change, saying that he'd become an "edgy messiah". Due to his half-Demon existence, Baltoh possesses a large amount of self-hatred. While they are first intimate, Selene realizes that Baltoh's fanaticism for slaying Demons is largely due to his desire prove that he is nothing like them, that by erasing their evil from existence, he is showing that he does not have that same evil within himself. Much of his loathing is also directed towards many of the souls within him. After a lifetime in Hell, he learned to forgive people for their sins and choices in life, something that many of his spirits did not know how to do. While they killed in the name of what they believed to be justice, it wasn't so, such as a crusader who killed Muslims to free Jerusalem. He strives to make up for their crimes, performed out of a misguided sense of justice. Upon achieving the Throne of Cinereo, Baltoh becomes much calmer and more confident, feeling no fear towards Masters of Torture or even the Hell Princes. His hatred of Demons loses none of its fury, though after speaking with God, he is at least able to forgive him for the conditions that allowed Baltoh to be born. Abilities and Equipment Demon and Archangel Powers Baltoh is capable of using both Archangel and Demon powers with incredible proficiency and power, letting him overpower both Archangels and Demons with little trouble. During the second battle, when facing an army of Demons, he is able to not only use four spells at once, but cut down their numbers single-handedly and with little to no injury. He routinely uses the forbidden spells, whether they are forbidden due to the energy expendature or the damage they can cause to the surrounding area. His power reserves and stamina are practically limitless under the best situations. If he balances defense as well as offense, he can fight nonstop against a Master of Torture for months and outlast it. During his fight with Amon, the Master of Torture that attacked New York, the two fighters put all their focus on delivering damage rather than avoiding it, and their injuries completely depleted their stamina. Ragnarök Baltoh's strongest ability and his trump card is his Ragnarök technique. By combining Demon and Angel energy, he can momentrily produce Cinereous power in the form of a linear blast. Baltoh points his wings at his target with his halo between the tips, spinning it and channeling his energy to space within. Once reaching critical mass, he unleashes the power in one direction. Upon firing, the beam expands into a cone shape, then stabilizes into a condensed laser with a diameter of over twelve miles. The blast acts as both a destructive force, capable of causing explosions and blowing up planets, and an extending section of space in which everything within its confines is subjected to reverse and fast-forwarded time. Anything physical or ethereal is reduced to its most fundamental elements, below even the formation of quarks. Even energy, such as an enemy blast, is automatically erased. At some unknown point in the past, Baltoh faced Prince Lucifer and used his Ragnarök technique. Lucifer survived only by avoiding it, and even then, half his body was obliterated. When Baltoh is in his normal state, he can only use Ragnarök once without his stamina being completely depleted. However, while enraged with Selene's death, he managed to fire multiple blasts with intervals of only a few seconds. In his normal state, the time required to charge the blast makes it ineffective for use against opponents possessing high speed and agility, and the exhaustion it causes forces him to flee from Hell to avoid retalliation. In his awakened form, he can fire rabid and sustained blasts from his throat rather than his wings, no no charge time and no fatigue. Awakened Form As a Hybrid, Baltoh exists with a special ability, a purpose that affects the entire universe. The Silver Hybrid was designed by the cosmos to be an apex predator, an existence stronger than all others, save for those that occupy the Thrones of Hell, Heaven, and Cinereo. No entity can exist with greater power than his own. Even the Hell Princes ended up losing some of their strength the moment Baltoh was born, as his existence formed a universal law limiting the strength that any entity can have. Likewise, Iscariot found that regardless of how many times she powered herself up, she was incapable of going beyond that limit. This law is best understood when he achieves his awakened form. As a Silver Hybrid, his basic power levels are equal to a Master of Torture, Titan, or Dark Hybrid, but as a half-Demon entity, he needs to feed on a living being to unlock his full strength. While possibly feeding on an Angel or human spirit would allow him to transform, the best results come from a living human. When he feeds, he transforms into what Mulciber calls "Cinereo's Dragon", a monster with ten tails, conch-like energy jets on his back, and a bony exoskeleton. When Baltoh feeds for the first time and transforms, Iscariot notices that she can't sense even a single spark of energy, that even the coldest stone in the darkest corner of space contains more power than Baltoh when he was transformed, but regardless of that, he was able to effortlessly overwhelm her. Under certain circumstances, Baltoh can achieve a partial transformation, including gargantuan boost of power or when overcome with rage and frustration, such as when he fought an army of Demons while Selene and Molly faced Ziraal. Due to his inexperience, Baltoh completely lost his mind when he first transformed, turning into a ravenous beast that attacked Lilith simply out of instinct. He lacked the intellect to use spells, but was able to use repeated, sustained Ragnarök blasts. Knowledge and Intellect What makes Baltoh so dangerous isn't just his physical abilities. He also possesses great intelligence and a vast reservoir of information on the three universes, including forbidden secrets. Most of his knowledge comes from the texts in Hell's library, books focusing on both Hell and Earth. He has also spoken with Archanghome worldd's homeworld, held captive by Tennebrous, and through them learned the truth of God's origins. Much of his information comes from one of his souls within him, the spirit of St. Longinus, the Roman soldier that killed Jesus Christ. During the crucifixion, when Longinus stabbed Christ, some of Jesus's blood landed in his eyes, not only restoring his vision but passing on Jesus's memories, and those memories were passed on to Baltoh. This gave him knowledge of the Christ's true mission on Earth as well as both his initial intention of bringing about the end of the world, and his later intention of allowing himself to be crucified to prevent it. These memories, containing within them a glimmer of Jesus Christ's power, allowed Baltoh to find the Sacred Relics that had been lost in Purgatory, something even God couldn't do. In regards to his intelligence, he has great intuition and processing abilities. Using both books from the Coven and machinery from God's homeworld, he ran simulations and experiments on possibly obtaining the Throne of Cinereo. He is highly proficient in his use of the three languages: Hellscript, Enochian, and Cinereous Hermeticism. He can write and understand long mathmatical equations using the languages, letting him cast protective wards of concealment on his home in Hell and keep the Sacred Relics safe with layer upon layer of barriers. Portal Mastery Like all Archangels, Baltoh is capable of creating interdimensional portals that let him instantly jump between Cinereo and Hell (he can also go to Heaven, but simply refuses to). He frequently uses this ability to escape to Cinereo when he is overwhelmed by his enemies, whether that means being chased by Iscariot or the Hell Princes or surrounded by Titans and Masters of Torture. Due to the repeated usage, he has developed a skill for letting him safely store and retrieve his weapons. Unlike the Archangels who actually materialize their weapons, or the Demons who draw their weapons from their own bodies, Baltoh keeps both his sword and his gun in Purgatory, and uses his portal ability to teleport them into his grip. When his revolver runs out of ammo, he can simply reload by ejecting the empty shell casings and opening up portals that send new bullets sliding into the open chambers. However, when it comes to inter-dimensional travel, he can only bring along inanimate object that contain Angelic energy. During his fight with Iscariot, he used a portal to summon a human, but only because that human was in the city. Due to the Holy Grail's barrier, this method couldn't be used to evacuate the civilians to Earth. God of Cinereo In order to achieve the Throne of Cinereo, Baltoh breaks the seals on his wrists; a pair of rosary beads and a pair of shackles. For a regular Demon or Archangel, this allows them to harness all of the power they possess, even the energy needed to maintain their forms. At the cost of death, it lets them temporarily become as strong as a Master of Torture. For Baltoh, breaking both at the same time allowed him to go beyond death and enter a rebirthing cycle, triggering a Cinereous reaction that let him achieve the Throne of Cinereo. It may be that only a Silver Hybrid is capable of achieving the Throne. After attaining the Throne of Cinereo, Baltoh gains divine level powers, allowing him to harness the elements of the cosmos, such as fire, water, ice, gravity, life, atomic motion. When he faces the Hell Prince, Satan, the Demon fires a blast that explodes into a supernova, however, it is unable to penetrate the ambient energy naturally flowing from Baltoh. By simply directing this energy, Baltoh is able to crush Satan into a super-dense marble, similar to a black hole. When facing Leviathan, he creates an army of both plants and animals, colossal in size and easily capable of killing the Titans in the Hell Prince's domain. In his fight with Lucifer, not only is he able to subject the battlefield to Absolute Zero, but he creates a black hole, breaks it into pieces, and alters their physical characteristics to remove their gravitational pull and turn them into a fatal barrage that he rains down upon his enemies. During his fight with Tennebrous, rather than using his old Hellsteel sword, he wields a sword made from the concentrated material of a black hole. Its gravitational pull is sealed until it makes contact with an enemy or object, at which point its gravity rips apart atomic and energy bonds and destroys whatever it touches. He is able to destroy and create planets and stars with little to no effort, even using a technique called the "Planetary Alignment Cannon", which is capable of destroying an entire galaxy. As his finishing move against Tennebrous, he activates an ability called the "Celestial Silence", a power that can only be used when he is synced with the Throne of the universe he is in, and lets him bend the fabric of space and time remove anything within it from existence. As the power of Cinereo is the progenitor of Demon and Angel energy, he is able to modify and boost the powers of his friends. Selene, Rosemary, and Molly are turned into living beings with powers well beyond Titans and Masters of Torture, and are able to use the power of the cosmos just as he does. Brought on by the enlightenment that comes with omnipotence and the powers of a god, be becomes much more calm and confident. He shows no fear upon returning to Hell and facing the Hell Princes, simply because they are no match for him. His social intuition is greatly enhanced, as without using any kind of mind-reading or telepathy, he knows the troubles plaguing his friends in the Circle of Sloth, and is able to ease their fears and worries. Hellsteel Weaponry Unlike Demons, which use weapons made of their bones, or Archangels, which are armed with claymores given to them by God, Baltoh carries a Hellsteel sword and pistol. Hellsteel is the alloy produced by combing Helliron and Hellcarbon, two ethereal elements found in the inferno. Hellsteel is ultimately indestructible, able to cut through anything without losing an edge and never snapping regardless of the force used. One of its key characteristics is its incredible weight, as it is one of the heaviest materials in existence, even though both Helliron and Hellcarbon are relatively light. When speaking with Gabriel in Alcatraz, he claimed his sword weighed more than the entire island, and each of his Hellsteel bullets was as heavy as a team of elephants. His sword is shaped similarly to a Spartan's, but with an added gut hook and large serrations running up the blade. It has no handle, only an exposed tang with grooves worn in the metal from eons of a strong grip. For the greatest quality Hellsteel, rather than simply mining the materials, Baltoh collected the Helliron and Hellcarbon from his blood and the blood of high-level Demons, such as Titans and Masters of Torture. This imbues the sword with a vast amount of power, increasing its weight, durability, and cutting ability. Along with his sword, he carries a pistol, hand-made and combining the designs of both a revolver and a minigun. It has six revolving chambers, each one serving as its own barrel, and carries bullets as large as shotgun shells. Due to how quickly he goes through bullets, Baltoh simply mines the materials rather than collecting them from his blood. He uses Hellsteel due to its strength and ability to punch through any defense. The gunpowder, like the metal, is collected from Hell. It consists of charcoal from undead trees, sulfur from the Lake of Fire, and salt from the blood of monsters. When combined, they form a mixture so powerful that just the powder in a single bullet possesses enough explosive power to dwarf ten blocks of C4. Combined with the hardness of the metal, Baltoh's Hellsteel bullets each have the destructive force of a meteorite. In his fight with Rimmon, his fired a shot and missed, but just the shockwave of it traveling through the air was enough to destroy almost half of his body. While never actually used by Baltoh, he possesses two rotary cannons, modeled after the GAU-8 Avenger Gatling guns used in the US military’s Fairchild Republic A-10 Thunderbolt II jets. Six meters in length with seven barrels each, they have a firing rate of 4200 rpm. While they themselves are made of Helliron, the 30-millimeter bullets are made of Hellsteel, each weighing over a thousand tons and consisting of solid armor-piercing slugs, hollow point, and high explosive rounds. They were an ongoing project of his, intended to be used on the Hell Princes, but upon completing them, loaned them to Marcus to use against Legion. Baltoh built them with the intention that other people could also use them, thus he mixed in his Angelic feathers during the casting process. The feathers react to the will of the user, producing an anti-gravity field and reducing the weight of the guns. Sacred Relics Throughout Christ's life, his death, and even afterward, his power and even parts of his soul were passed on into the objects around him. There is the Holy Chalice, True Cross, Crown of Thorns, Holy Lance, thirty pieces of silver, Shroud of Turin, and the Nails of Helena. After Jesus's death, Iscariot stole almost all of the Sacred Relics, including the Ark of the Covenant and [of Moses, and replaced them with fakes. The forces of Heaven managed to seize the Holy Grail, while Iscariot experienced some problem in the journey back to Hell, and lost all but the pieces of silver in Purgatory. The Sacred Relics contain a vast amount of holy energy and have the ability to manipulate reality to an extent, even possibly close the portal that the Demons had opened. They also contain pieces of Christ's soul, keeping him a pseudo existence. Since there can only be one Light Hybrid existing at a time, as long as the Sacred Relics are intact, another Light Hybrid can't be made. Along with some of Jesus Christ's memories, Baltoh also received a small part of Jesus's energy. Using this spark, he was able to track down the rest of the Sacred Relics in Purgatory, where even God could not find them. Knowing that they could be used to create another Light Hybrid and restart the Christ plot, Baltoh hid the relics from both the forces of Heaven and Hell. He sealed them away, deep in the heart of Jupiter, under layer upon layer of barriers and protective spells. So afraid of this possibility was he, that even with the portal to Hell slowly opening and the people of New York being slaughtered, he kept the relics hidden, even while knowing they could probably put a stop to everything. Towards the end of the war, a Demon from Hell came to the city to offer a deal: if Baltoh and the defending forces gave up their Sacred Relics, Tennebrous would close the portal. The Demon also warned of Iscariot's arrival the following day, coming to either collect the relics as part of the deal or simply kill everyone and steal them. The Archangels turn on Baltoh, considering this to be a sign of betrayal, that he would keep them secret. When Michael calls Baltoh evil, Baltoh laughs, overwhelmed by Michael's hypocrisy. It is then that he tells everyone of Jesus's true mission on Earth. With the battle imminent, Baltoh combines his Sacred Relics into a halberd and shield, giving Rosemary the shield to use in order to fight Legion. Both the halberd and shield vastly increase the Angelic power of the one who wields them. He is a fair match for Iscariot, someone who had always been able to beat him effortlessly and had even been further strengthened by the possession of Binding Nails. In his first attempt to achieve the Throne of Cinereo, Baltoh uses the halberd as a vessel, with which he combines the powers of himself, Iscariot, and Jesus Christ. His plan was to channel all of that power into dead bacteria on the end of the spear blade, which had been drawn to Christ's blood. He reanimates the bacteria and unleashes the energy into them, trying to cause a resurrection cycle and trigger a Cinereous reaction. The attempt fails, but while he is unable to use the halberd to achieve the Throne of Cinereo, it does become infused with a vast torrent of Cinereous energy, acting like a condensed, weaponized version of his Ragnarök blast. With this halberd, Baltoh is able to negate Iscariot's immortality, erasing both her body and soul.